


Blue Shift

by Zara_Zee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt!Sam, Misuse of scientific theory, Show level violence, Supernatural Elements, case!fic, hurt!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27913954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zee/pseuds/Zara_Zee
Summary: Larry Winston, overnight security guard at the American Museum of Natural History, is having his very own, real life,Night at the Museumexperience and he seeks out Sam and Dean’s help. While Sam is geeking out over the museum’s newest exhibition, Dean is delighted by the chance to play a starring role in a real life action-comedy; but comedy soon turns to tragedy, and it’s hard to tell which Winchester is hurt worse. The only thing that’s certain is that this hunt is going to be a battle against time; in more ways than one.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19
Collections: Supernatural Summergen 2020





	Blue Shift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amberdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams/gifts).



> This was written for Amberdreams, for this year's Summergen challenge. I went with the ‘the clock strikes 13, night at the museum’ prompt, with a little hurt Winchesters thrown in for good measure. This story contains a Hollywood version of AMNH, and some general hand-waving for the purposes of plot...with apologies to Albert Einstein.   
> Set October 2011, in between 7.08 and 7.09

It was a bright cold day in October when Dean Winchester’s _other_ cell phone rang, shrill and unexpected from the depths of the glovebox. 

“Crap,” Dean startled and squeezed his burger just a little too hard. Onion, melted cheese and ketchup dripped over his hands and down onto his thighs. “Shit.”

He dropped the burger into the cardboard tray it had come in and hurriedly wiped his hands on a napkin before fumbling the glovebox open and snatching up the phone.

“Hello?”

Silence. A deep breath. And then. A man’s voice. Unfamiliar.

“Uh…is that…Dean Winchester?”

“Who wants to know?” Dean replied, in the cold, unyielding tone of a man who was recently number two on the FBI’s most wanted list.

“Oh. Uh. My name’s Larry. Larry Winston. I got your number from Deacon Kaylor. I served with him. And…and your father. You’re John Winchester’s kid, right?”

Dean _had_ gotten a text from Deacon after the whole ‘evil doppleganger murder spree and supposed death’ incident, and Dean had called him back to say that he and Sam were still alive, and not evil. But they were still on the Leviathans’ most wanted list, so. He wasn’t sold. Not yet.

“Why you callin’ me?” he asked.

“I’ve got a problem. It’s uh. A little weird.”

Dean waited.

“And uh,” Larry continued. “Deacon, he told me that…weird is kinda what you do? He, uh, mighta mentioned something about…shapeshifters? And…ghosts?”

The last word was spoken with a hopeful lilt.

“You got a ghost problem, Larry?”

“Not… _exactly_. I don’t think,” Larry said cautiously. “Unless…can ghosts possess inanimate objects?”

“Yep,” Dean said. “And poltergeists can throw stuff around. Or the object could be cursed.”

“Objects,” Larry said. “Lots of them. Did I mention that I’m the overnight security guard at the American Museum of Natural History in New York?”

Dean’s eyes lit up with unholy glee.

“No way,” he breathed. “You got yourself a real life _Night at the Museum_ situation happening? We can be there in three hours.”

\--

Back at the abandoned warehouse they were currently squatting in, Dean waited until Sam had a mouthful of rabbit food wrap to tell him about the awesome case he’d caught them.

“Are you out of your Goddamn mind?” Sammy yelled at him, when he’d finished coughing up alfalfa and gotten his breath back. “Do you have any idea how many surveillance cameras per square mile there are in New York City?”

“No?” Dean said, mildly interested. “Do you?”

Sam frowned. “No. But I do know they have at least 18,000 interconnected cameras linked to the NYPD’s security system. And you want to go to the American Museum of Natural History!” Sammy waved his arms effusively. “Why don’t you just go stand in Times Square wearing a bright yellow tee-shirt that says _Wanted for Murder_?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Leviathan!us _died_ , Sam. I doubt the LEs have BOLOs out for dead guys.”

Sam conceded the point with a tilt of his head. “Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean the _Leviathans_ aren’t looking for us. Frank said we had to keep our heads down,” Sam frowned. “How’d you get a call from some guy from Dad’s past anyway? How’d the guy know your new number?”

Dean ducked his head and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I, uh, may have kept one of my old cell phones. A lot of civilians had the number and…you know, people text me sometimes, like when they hear we’re dead again. Or if we go racing up the most wanted charts again. And what if someone needed our help? Like Larry does now? I couldn’t just get rid of it!”

Sam’s lips flattened into a grim line, but he merely sighed and nodded.

“Let’s pass this onto someone else. Garth, maybe?”

Dean actually _felt_ his bottom lip drop. “C’mon, Sam. You’re being ridiculous. We’re not gonna be wandering around New York like tourists, we’re gonna be locked up in the museum dealing with the case, and then we’ll head straight outta town afterwards.”

Sam looked dubious, but he was also starting to look just a little bit resigned.

Dean unleased his own version of puppy dog eyes. “We deserve this, Sammy. They’ve got a real live dead mummy wandering around the museum at night! That is a genuine horror movie classic, little brother.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “In case you didn’t notice, our whole life is a horror movie.”

Dean conceded the point with an eyeroll. “Okay, but Night at the Museum is a comedy. C’mon, man. Our annual Vegas pilgrimage got screwed over this year…and I get it, I do. You’ve got a lot going on right now. And you were…are…pissed at me. And then you got roofied by Becky,” Sam’s face darkened. “Look…I just think this could be a fun case for us. C’mon, Sammy. Please?”

Sam sighed again. “Okay. Fine. But just a quick in and out.”

Dean beamed, his eyes crinkled at the corners and sparkling with happiness.

“Awesome!”

\--

Because of Sam’s concerns about New York’s security cameras, they timed their arrival for ten minutes before Larry’s shift started. Dean had been in contact with Larry; had let him know they’d be in a little later than he’d originally said, and Larry had promised to leave a side door unlocked for them. 

There was an Icon Parking garage a block away from the museum. Dean generally preferred to park at least three blocks away from the scene of a hunt like this, just in case things went south. There was nothing worse than having your car stuck inside an area cordoned off by the cops. But this wasn’t Baby—she was still safely hidden away—and if he had to dump the blue Dodge Challenger, then so be it. It was probably about time to get a new car anyway. Dean decided that potentially losing the car was a fair price to pay for only being exposed to New York’s fifty billion security cameras for five minutes instead of fifteen.

“Hang on,” Sam said when Dean went to open his door.

Dean waited while Sam reached over to the back seat and opened his clothes duffle, digging out his black hoodie and his old grey hoodie.

“Here,” he passed the grey one to Dean. “Hoods up, heads down, walk fast.”

A brisk four minute walk later Larry was ushering them through the museum’s side door.

“Wow,” Larry was looking at them with wide eyes. “Deacon said it was, uh, shapeshifters that did those murders, but looking at you two is,” he swallowed.

Dean manufactured his best harmless dude smile. “Tell me about it,” he said. “After what our evil twins did, I can barely look in the mirror some days.”

Sam nodded, all earnest-puppy, and then held out his hand. “I’m Sam,” he said. “And this is my brother Dean. Is there somewhere we can go to talk about the case?”

Larry led them to his security booth, located on the lower level.

“So, three nights ago,” Larry said, when they were all sitting down, “at exactly one minute past midnight, a clock struck thirteen. It was real loud; like some kind of massive grandfather clock, but we don’t have anything like that in the museum. I mean we have some clocks, sure. We’ve just opened a new exhibition called _A Matter of Time_. But there’s nothing that makes a noise like that.”

A new exhibition. Well that sounded like a good place to start. Dean met his brother’s eyes and Sam nodded in unspoken agreement, before turning his attention back to Larry and asking him what happened next.

Larry’s brow furrowed. “Well. Like I told your brother on the phone, I went to try and figure out what was doing the bonging, and the exhibits just started coming to life. And they…they ran amok! Everything was wrecked. I hid. I mean. Goddamn it. There was a T-Rex running around! You’d hide too. And then, just as dawn was breaking, there was a giant flash of light and I woke up on the floor of the security booth,” Larry chuckled darkly. “I just figured I’d fallen asleep and had a nightmare. A damn realistic nightmare. But still. Not real.” he drew a deep breath. “And then it happened again the next night. Only this time,” Larry took a deep breath. “This time, when I woke up I had this,” he rolled his sleeve up and showed them a bandage. “Goddamn bear tried to claw me! So when I woke up and everything was back to normal…but I still had this gash on my arm…that’s when I remembered Deacon telling tall tales about ghosts and John’s boys helping him out. Only suddenly…those tales didn’t seem so tall any more. So I called Deacon. And he gave me your number.”

Sam met Dean’s eyes. “What d’you think? Trickster? Witch?”

Dean shrugged. “Could be. Or some kind of Thought Form, maybe?” he paused to consider. “Okay. How about we split up; brawn vs brains. You go check out this new exhibition, check for sigils, hex bags, anything…hinky. I’ll go with Ben Stiller, here,” he put an arm around Larry’s shoulders, “and start corralling anything dangerous.”

\--

The _A Matter of Time_ exhibition was freakin’ awesome.

The Museum had moved some stuff in from their Einstein Exhibit, including some pages from his 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity, a photo of Einstein and Michele Besso beside the clock towers that prompted Einstein’s realization about the nature of time, and his Nobel medal and Certificate.

The museum had also borrowed some Einstein things from other exhibitions at other museums; a black board with a bunch of equations written by Einstein himself; the desk from his study, complete with notebooks, desk lamp, ashtray and pipe; a coin collection, with every coin ever minted to commemorate Einstein; and Einstein’s brain (along with a fascinating story about how it had been stolen after his death and how the research done on it was basically nonsense that proved nothing and how Einstein had feared that very result which is why he’d insisted that his whole body should be cremated after his death and not kept and studied).

And then there were all the time keeping devices.

There were water clocks from ancient Egypt, candle clocks from ancient China and sundials from ancient Greece. There were mechanical clocks and pendulum clocks and clocks with quartz oscillators. There were pocket watches, early wrist watches and marine chronometers. There was a fascinating story about the use of wristwatches in warfare and Sam was part way through reading it when his cell phone rang and made him jump.

“What’s up, Dean?”

“Just checking in. You find anything yet?”

Sam frowned. “It’s barely been ten minutes.”

There was a long pause and then Dean said, “Dude. It’s been an hour! Are you geeking out down there, you nerd? I should’ve made _you_ come and lug T’Rex bones around instead!”

“Sorry,” Sam said. “There’s just a lot of fascinating stuff here. They’ve even got Einstein’s brain here!”

And yup, Sam winced. That was definitely his ‘geeking out’ voice; the one usually reserved for his monologues about serial killers.

“Gross,” Dean said. “Putting someone’s brain on display is just…nasty.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I guess. So listen, Nothing…wiggy…has jumped out at me yet, but I’ll keep looking, let you know if I find anything,” he paused. “It could be that whatever’s gonna happen, we won’t be able to see what’s causing it until it actually happens.”

“Yeah. Which is why me and Larry are hauling T-Rex, mountain-lion and saber-tooth tiger bones into the museum’s vaults. ”

“I’ll call you if I find anything,” Sam promised, before hitting end and shutting his phone.

And then he focused and applied himself diligently to looking for anything hinky.

Honestly, though, there didn’t seem to be anything. Sam frowned. Sure, there were enough bits of Einstein lying around for his ghost to be tethered here; but why would the ghost of Einstein be making things come to life?

Sam sighed. Maybe Dean had been right. Maybe he _should_ be up there hauling old bones and mummified remains around.

When Dean had made his brawn vs brain comment, Sam had felt his usual fleeting spark of irritation. It wasn’t a fair characterization of either of them; they both had brawns _and_ brains. Sam knew now that Dean was mostly kidding when he said that stuff, but he still hated it when his brother put himself down like that, because he knew that a lot of the people they came across bought into the lie. Dean was a staunchly blue collar, working class guy, and in the minds of a lot of middle-America, that precluded intelligence and sophisticated thinking. Sam himself had made that mistake when he was younger; had thought that going to college, taking on a white collar profession, would make him ‘better’ than he’d been raised to be. He’d soon realized that there were plenty of monsters lurking behind white picket fences and in the corridors of power and maybe they didn’t suck blood or eat hearts, but they _chose_ evil, which in many ways was worse.

He and Dean stopped the apocalypse and saved the world. They probably both had PTSD and Sam knew his own sanity was a little fragile since the wall came down, but he was proud of the man he was; proud of the man his brother was; and if those men sometimes squatted in run down houses or slept in their car, well, that didn’t detract one bit from their integrity and strength of character.

Sam ran a hand through his hair and turned in a slow circle. Nothing was jumping out at him. There were no hex bags in evidence, no sigils that he could see. If there was a cursed object in the room, he wasn’t going to be able to spot it unless it did something. And even if something started to happen, it wouldn’t necessarily be clear what was causing it.

Sam checked the clocks—all of them. And his watch. They all showed the same time; 5 minutes to midnight. Whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen soon. He just hoped that Dean and Larry had gotten all the potentially dangerous creatures safely locked away.

\--

Dean paused for a moment to fan his tee-shirt, which was wet and clinging to his back (he’d taken off the hoodie and tied it around his waist half an hour ago) and then he went back to pushing a large utility cart with the last of the brown bears laying atop it. Between the two of them, he and Larry had moved taxidermied brown bears, black bears, coyotes, wolves, bobcats, lions, leopards, cougars and saber-toothed tigers, and dinosaur skeletons. They’d started off handling them carefully, but Dean had soon realized the scope of the task before them and had discarded treating the exhibits with kid gloves, in favor of ensuring that said exhibits wouldn’t be left out to possibly eat them. And he was having to take a triage approach too. The elephants, for example, could easily trample them to death, and the herds of bison could gouge them, but there just wasn’t time to move them all into the vaults. He at least had the forethought to separate them as best he could in order to minimize the carnage. Big cats in one vault, bears and wolves in another. T’Rex got its own vault.

BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!

Ah crap. Dean sprinted the rest of the way and sent the cart freewheeling into the vault before slamming it shut and bolting it.

The clock struck for the thirteenth time and then…nothing.

Dean cocked his head and looked at Larry, who shrugged.

Together they made their way back into the Animal Hall. The elephants were still stuffed elephants; the bison were still stuffed bison.

Dean turned to Larry. “You sure you didn’t smoke a little too much of the good stuff? Maybe scratch your own arm?”

Larry glowered. He pulled his shirt sleeve up and rolled back the bandage. “Does that look like something human finger nails could do?”

No, it did not. Dean swallowed. “Okay. So…how long, last time, until things started coming to life?”

Larry shook his head. “I don’t know. The first night I, uh, I saw the chimps first. Maybe half an hour after the clock struck thirteen? And then I saw the apes and I went back to the security booth and hid. And I stayed hid, no matter what came running past. The second night, I hid straight away. But then I heard somebody screaming and I had to go and help them. Was a young guy. Just a regular looking dude, except he was wrapped in bandages. All except his head. He’d obviously unwrapped them from around his head. He was being hunted by a pack of wolves,” Larry shook his head. “Poor kid didn’t speak a word of English. I shot one of the wolves, which scared the rest away and then we ran, me and the kid. Got cornered by some grizzlies and that fight wasn’t going so good, let me tell you. But then, there was the most god almighty roar and the bears just scattered,” Larry laughed. “Goddamn T’Rex. Me and the kid managed to get into the janitor’s closet while T’Rex was snacking on bears and we stayed hid in there until there was a flash of red light and then, like I said, I woke up in the security booth again.”

“ _Red_ light?” Dean queried.

Larry nodded.

Dean’s phone began to ring and he opened it quickly. “You got something, Sammy?”

“No,” his brother said. “Nothing except for that flash of blue light.”

“ _Blue_ light?” Dean said.

“Yeah. You didn’t see that?”

“Nope. But Larry said the flash of light he saw when it was all over was _red_.”

“Huh,” Sam said. “How’d you go getting all the predators locked away?”

Dean pulled a face, even though Sam couldn’t see him. “Got a lot of ‘em stashed in the vaults. Not all, but hopefully the most dangerous. This place is _big_ and the vaults are way down in the basement.” 

“Uh, Dean?” Larry grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around.

There was an ape watching them with narrowed eyes from the inside of a glass case.

“Tell me that’s bullet proof glass?” Dean said.

Larry shrugged.

The ape raised his arms and smashed them against the glass.

There was a crack.

“Crap,” Dean said, backing away fast. “Sam, we gotta book. We’re about to have a close encounter with General Thade.”

“Okay. Be careful. They’ve got a student center on this floor with computers. I’m gonna hit up the lore, see if I can find anything about red and blue flashes of light.” 

“Okay.”

A mighty bellow rang throughout the room as General Thade lifted his arms and smacked the cracked glass again. The crack lengthened and Dean hit end, shoved his phone back in his pocket and grabbed Larry’s arm.

“Run!”

The animals in the displays they ran past remained stuffed and still and Dean racked his brain trying to figure it out.

The ground floor, which contained the Animal Hall, also contained some of the special exhibits. At the moment there was an Ancient Egypt exhibition happening, complete with giant pyramid painted over the door and Dean skidded to a stop at the sight of a man swathed in bandages running out of said pyramid.

The man’s eyes narrowed at Larry and widened at Dean and then he was in front of them, saying something. Dean didn’t recognize the language, but he recognized the tone.

This was someone who was used to giving orders demanding to speak to the manager, because he wanted to know just what the fuck was going on.

“You and me both, Pal,” Dean said.

The man’s eyes slid back across to him and he addressed Dean directly.

Dean listened and then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I only speak English,” he cocked his head. “A little Latin. Badly. A few words of Spanish. And a little Enochian. But not…whatever you’re speaking. Probably Ancient Egyptian, huh?”

The man frowned.

Dean put a hand on his own chest. “Dean,” he said slowly.

The man met his eyes. “Dean,” he said, pointing at Dean.

Dean grinned. And pointed at the man.

Who said something long and incomprehensible to Dean.

“Oh boy,” Dean rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I feel like Bruce Willis in _The Fifth Element_ ,” he cleared his throat. “You got a shorter name?” he held his hands out and then brought them together slowly. “Shorter? Not Jehut-blahblahblah. Shorter?”

The man’s eyes narrowed and he said something that, again, Dean understood just by the tone. It was the same tone Bobby used when he called Dean an idjit.

“Kyky,” the Egyptian said shortly, tapping his own chest.

Dean smiled.

And then Larry grabbed his arm. “Gorilla!”

“Ah shit.”

The three of them ran up the nearest stairs with the gorilla in pursuit.

“There’s an area up here that’s closed for renovation,” Larry jangled his bunch of keys, “We’ll lock ourselves in there.”

Larry was wheezing by the time they ran past the Hall of North American Mammals.

Which, Dean noted, were still motionless stuffed animals.

Once they were safely locked inside the closed for renovation area, Dean called Sam.

Sam had successfully picked the lock on the education center and had found the wifi password, handily written on a post-it note and stuck to the instructor’s monitor. So far, he wasn’t having much luck working the blue and red lights angle.

“You see anything weird up there?” Dean asked.

“The gorillas in the Hall of African Mammals are alive, but nothing else. The glass up here’s better than the glass in those free-standing cases though. They’re banging on it, but they can’t get out.”

“Huh,” Dean frowned. “We’ve got the mummy with us. Bandages and everything, although he’s pulled them off his face. Says his names Kyky.”

Kyky looked sharply at Dean when he heard his name and Dean tried to smile reassuringly.

“Really?” Sam sounded fascinated. “Hang on a sec, I’m gonna check something,” Dean could hear rapid-fire clicking. A moment later, Sam snorted and sighed. “The museum doesn’t have many human remains on display any more. There are a few bones here and there, but NAGPRA made them re-evaluate that whole displaying human remains thing and they basically boxed everything up and put it in storage. They’re working on repatriating the native remains, and they’re worried about the origins of some of the African remains they’ve got. There are also some Australian Aboriginal remains and some human bones where they’re not sure on the origins; they got them off the Natural History Museum in London. Bottom line, we might wanna check the vaults. There could be some very confused people down there. And they don’t just keep human remains in the vaults. Anything that’s not on display for whatever reason gets boxed up and put down there.”

“Ah crap,” Dean said. “We also moved all the dangerous animals down there. I’m gonna have to go get those people out. They might’ve been dead a few moments ago, but I still don’t want ‘em to get eaten alive on my watch.”

More clicking.

“Ok,” Sam said. “I’ve got a theory. Evolution--”

“Pretty sure that ain’t _your_ theory,” Dean quipped.

Sam huffed and Dean could picture his exact bitch face.

“If you go backwards along the evolutionary timeline, humans are the most recent, then primates not long before them. So far, all we’ve got is live primates and humans; maybe that’s because there’s a bit of a gap until the mammals. And then there’s another big gap until the reptiles and dinosaurs. My theory is that, maybe, we’re travelling backwards along the evolutionary timeline. For some reason. Or maybe they’re travelling forward. The dangerous animals you moved were all mammals and dinosaurs, right? So we’ve probably got a bit of time to get the people out.”

It made as much sense as anything. Sam was still at a loss to explain what was causing it, but he was leaning more toward tricksters or gods, because, in his words, messing with time on such an epic scale required some serious mojo.

When Dean got off the phone, he told Larry and Kyky to go up to the second floor and meet up with Sam. He didn’t tell them that he was heading back down to the vaults to rescue people before they found themselves trapped with mountain lions or a T’rex, because he didn’t want civilians trying to help him and getting themselves hurt.

\--

Sam sat for a moment staring at the computer screen and then he looked up gods and goddess associated with time and tried to memorize their names and symbols.

He studiously ignored Lucifer who was sitting on one of the desks in front of him, swinging his legs and poking his forked tongue out at Sam. Sam pushed his thumb into the scar on his hand and then, when Lucifer vanished, he dragged himself to his feet and walked slowly past the various Peoples’ Halls, but the people in the dioramas were obviously made of wax or plastic or something, because there was nothing alive in any of the glass cases that made up the Peoples’ Halls.

Back in the room housing the _A Matter of Time_ Exhibit, Sam stood for a moment, considering. If there was a god, goddess, minor deity of some description or trickster hanging around, how was he going to flush it out? If he could figure out who it was, he could find a way to summon and kill it, he was sure. But there were a lot of time and fate deities. Like… _a lot_.

Sam frowned and began going through the room again with a fine tooth comb. When he got to the Einstein coin collection he hit pay dirt. One of the coins didn’t have Einstein on it and when Sam looked closely at it, he recognized Aion and Aeternitas, the Greek and Roman God and Goddess of unbound time. Sam broke the glass case and took out the coin, turning it over in his hand. It was a Roman coin and depicted a phoenix on the back. 

While Sam much preferred the larger screen of a lap top or computer monitor when he was doing research, he could make use of his cell phone in a pinch. Opening up a web browser, Sam hit up a Hunter’s lore site that specialized in the Greek and Roman pantheons.

The site made mention of enchanted coins that could be used to help the owner travel in time, but that didn’t really explain what was happening here. It did say, however, that the enchantment could be easily deactivated by salting and burning the coin. 

Sam huffed. He wasn’t convinced that the coin was the full story, but he liked the odds that it was somehow connected to whatever was going on. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out his lighter fluid and lighter and a small packet of salt, one of several stolen from diners for exactly this sort of impromptu thing. He sprinkled salt on the coin, poured lighter fluid on it and set it alight.

There was a tiny flash of green and Sam fist pumped and then got out his cell phone and called Dean, just in case they’d gotten incredibly lucky.

“Little busy, Sam.”

There was roaring and snarling in the background and Dean sounded out of breath.

So at least that answered his question. Things had not gone back to normal.

“You need help?” Sam asked.

“Nah, I got this. Gotta go though.”

Sam did another lap of the exhibition. Something else was playing a part in all this. Something that, just maybe, was somehow drawing on the power of the enchanted coin. Sam frowned and massaged his temples. What was he missing?

He ended up back at the coin collection.

Next to the coins, in a glass case all of its own was Einstein’s Nobel medallion. Sam looked at it closely. According to the didactic panel beneath the medal, it depicted the Goddess Isis, emerging from the clouds, holding a cornucopia in her arms. The veil which covered her face was apparently being pulled back by the Genius of Science and the inscription on the medal read: _Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes_ which the panel translated as _let us improve life through arts._

Sam thought that was a strange inscription for a prize awarded for physics and chemistry, but the didactic panel then explained that the inscription was inspired by a scene from Vergil’s _Aeneid_ , in which the hero, Aeneas, goes to the underworld, and sees the spirits of people who made great contributions to the betterment of humankind by their creations and discoveries in the arts _and_ sciences. The original line, _inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes,_ translated as: _they who bettered life on earth by new-found mastery,_ made more sense to Sam. Einstein had certainly bettered life on earth by his mastery of maths and physics. 

And Isis was the Goddess of life and magic. Sam tilted his head. Huh. He smashed the glass case and took the medallion out, turning it over in his hands.

“I see you have my medal,” said a thickly accented voice from somewhere behind him. “Interesting inscription, no?”

Sam swallowed and then turned, slowly.

Yep. That was Albert Einstein.

Holy crap.

“I won that,” Einstein said, “for my services to theoretical physics. In particular, for my discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect,” Einstein sniffed. “Of course that twisted fool Lenard, was furious that I --a _Jew_ no less-- had won and he had the medal cursed. The Nazis were very interested in the occult, you know.”

Sam nodded. He did know that. “What was the curse?” he asked.

Einstein smiled and raised one sardonic eyebrow. “That I would fail in my ultimate quest and never produce a unified field theory,” his smile broadened. “He was right. I didn’t. But I do not believe that was because of his curse, but because the knowledge and tools needed to complete a unified theory hadn’t been developed when I was still alive. I was,” he smiled mischievously, “quite simply, ahead of my time.”

Einstein flickered out and then flickered back in beside his blackboard.

“My final blackboard,” he said. “I was still working on this theory when I died. My notes, the ones I wrote just before I died, are on that desk. This is my unfinished business. I have used this _unexpected time_ to work on my calculations.”

Sam frowned down at the medallion. “Mr Einstein,” he began.

“Albert, please,” the scientist said with a smile.

“Albert. Right. I’m Sam. Sam Winchester.”

Einstein beamed. “A pleasure. I would shake hands, but I am mostly non-corporeal. Holding this chalk requires a lot of mental faculty, let me tell you.”

Sam blinked. “Uh. Right. So. Do you mind if I try something? With this medal? I might be able to lift the curse.”

Einstein raised a craggy eyebrow. “You’re not with the Thule Society are you?”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t even know what that is. I’m a Hunter.”

Einstein grinned again. “But of course.”

Sam gaped at him. “You’ve heard of Hunters?”

Einstein nodded. “For those of us whose minds are truly open, the secret world of the supernatural is not so secret.”

Wow. Sam shook his head slightly in wonder.

“I was raised a Hunter. I tried to leave that ‘secret world’ once; went to college. But, uh, it pulled me back in.”

Einstein nodded. “What has been seen cannot be unseen. There is no hiding from the truth, not unless you are a fool. You do not strike me as a fool Sam Winchester.”

Sam tried not to blush. “So anyway,” he said. “Are you okay if I try to get rid of the curse?”

Einstein nodded, so Sam poured salt and lighter fluid on the medallion and set it alight.

There was a brilliant, bright flash, but Sam didn’t hear the loud _boom!_ that followed it, because he was too busy being hurled across the room and dashed against the far wall.

\--

Judging by the yelling and banging there were people in more than one of the vaults and Dean sprinted the last few feet, keen to get them out before they become lion chow or a tasty T’Rex snack. Miraculously coming back from the dead, only to get eaten within hours would suck.

Dean skidded to a stop outside the first vault and opened it…and was immediately confronted by a very angry, very armed, Indian warrior. Judging by his clothing, he’d been dead for a few hundred years.

“Hey whoa!” Dean stepped back, hands raised. “I’m here to help, man.”

Dean knew precisely nothing about real Indians. As a kid, he’d loved cowboy movies and there were often Indians in those, but even Dean was aware that they were Hollywood caricatures. Dean frowned. Of course, if Sam were here he’d probably tell Dean off for calling them Indians. You were supposed to call them First Nations People now. 

Anyway, this First Nations guy seemed to realize that Dean was part of the solution, not part of the problem, and after glowering for a few more moments, he cautiously ushered a whole bunch of people out of the vault. The whole group disappeared down the hallway and as Dean shut and bolted the vault, he figured that at least he’d given them a fighting chance.

The next vault had a dozen Africans in it. Dean had no clue whereabouts they were from, but he was pretty impressed by their brightly colored outfits and fancy hats. They seemed scared of Dean and, what with the language barrier, he couldn’t really convince them that he wasn’t dangerous, so he just turned his back and waited until they snuck away and then shut the vault behind them.

The final vault that Dean opened contained Asians, Inuits and a couple of women that Dean couldn’t identify. They were pretty dark. Maybe the Australian Aboriginals that Sam had mentioned?

Dean was not the most socially aware guy and he could be pretty obtuse about a lot of things, but he was definitely noting a theme here; none of the people whose bones the museum was currently keeping in storage were white.

The Asians—Dean had no clue which country in Asia they were from—filed out slowly, giving him wary looks and a polite nod as they passed. The Inuits looked pretty freaked, but they were also keen to leave the vault, giving the bobcats and cougars shoved in the corner wary looks, which suggested to Dean that they were at least aware that things were coming back to life and they didn’t want to be stuck in a vault with reanimated wild cats.

Eventually only the two black women—the ones Dean thought might be Australian Aboriginals—were left and they did not seem keen to leave the vault. They were clearly terrified of Dean and didn’t seem to recognize the bobcats and cougars as something dangerous.

Dean did a lot of gesturing, tried to persuade them to come out before the wild cats came to life, but he didn’t seem to be getting through to them. In fact one of the women actually made some gestures of her own, gestures that looked to Dean like some kind of warding magic.

Dean sighed. “I swear to…whatever you guys believe in…that I’m not an evil spirit.”

The women continued to eye him suspiciously.

And then there was a sudden ripple of blue light across both the shelves and the bobcats and cougars and Dean swore.

“Please,” he begged, beckoning them desperately. “You’ve gotta get out _now_.”

The real fear in his voice must, finally, have been enough to persuade them, because they both ran, straight past him and up the stairs.

Dean had almost swung the heavy vault door closed when a cougar paw came darting out and raked down his right thigh, from his hip down to his knee.

“Son of a bitch!” Dean snarled, stumbling and letting the vault door ease back open a fraction. The cougar got its paw out further and this time, it caught Dean’s calf.

Dean’s jeans were rapidly getting wet and sticky as his blood soaked through. A surge of adrenaline enabled him to get the damn vault door shut and bolted and he leaned against it for a moment, breathing hard.

His cell phone rang.

“Little busy, Sam.”

Behind the locked vault doors, various big cats snarled, wolves and coyotes howled, bears roared and, in the distance, Dean could hear elephants trumpeting, hyenas cackling and here and there, a human cry.

Dean braced himself against the vault door and looked down. He’s jeans were as wet and red as they felt.

“You need help?” Sam asked.

Fuck. He was going to have to get that blood flow stopped.

“Nah,” he lied. “I got this. Gotta go though.”

Once he’d hung up, Dean untied his hoodie from around his waist and then he wrapped it around his thigh as tightly as possible. That job done, he took another steadying breath and began to limp toward the stairwell, supporting his weight against the side of the wall as much as he could.

By the time he got from the basement to the lower level, he was sweating and dizzy and the scene that greeted him did little to calm the too-fast beating of his heart.

Beneath the wide open space where the replica of the blue whale hung (Dean took a moment to thank his lucky stars that the whale was a replica and not a taxidermied version of the real thing) the Asian elephants and the African elephants were squaring off in what definitely looked like it was going to be a super destructive territorial battle.

Dean plucked his colt from the waistband of his jeans and slowly, painstakingly, made his way up to the first floor. A grizzly bear came loping past him when he was half way up, but it merely gave him a startled glance and kept going.

Dean rested again on the first floor landing and glumly contemplated the fact that this was not as much fun as the movie made it look.

One more floor to go and Dean wasn’t sure he was going to make it without help. He didn’t want to distract Sam from the important work of figuring out what was going on, but it looked like he was going to have to. With a trembling hand, he got out his cell phone and called his brother.

It was Larry who answered and Dean was instantly on alert.

“Where’s Sam?”

“Sam? Uh, he’s, uh,” Larry sounded nervous as hell. “He’s a little…unconscious right now.”

“He’s _what_? Why? What happened?”

“He was like this when we got here,” Larry said. “But, uh,” he cleared his throat. “Einstein says he got thrown across the room when he tried to take the curse off his Nobel Medallion.”

Dean frowned. Wow. He must be more out of it than he thought. He could’ve sworn Larry just said _Einstein_ was answering questions.

“Sorry, _who_ said?”

Larry chuckled nervously. “Einstein. Or, well. His ghost anyway.”

Einstein’s ghost.

Sure. Why not?

Dean’s leg gave an excruciating twinge and he couldn’t quite stifle his pained gasp.

“Are you alright?” Larry asked.

“Fine,” Dean said. Because if Sam was unconscious, he wanted Larry staying with Sam. “Just, uh, got a little scratched up. I’ll be fine. I’m on my way to you.”

Dean levered himself to his feet, took a deep, fortifying breath and slowly, agonizingly began to climb the last staircase between him and his brother.

\--

Consciousness returned to Sam with a splitting headache and a shooting pain in his shoulder when he tried to sit up.

“Easy, son,” Larry said. “Looks like you’ve dislocated your shoulder.”

Between Larry and some guy partially wrapped in bandages they got Sam sitting up.

Einstein, Sam noted was back at his blackboard.

In the distance, there were big cats roaring, wolves howling and…was that elephants trumpeting?

“I guess it didn’t work, huh?” he said to no one in particular.

Einstein materialized at his side. “I wouldn’t say that.” He tapped his head. “I’m having breakthrough after breakthrough, so I think the curse may have been lifted. I just don’t think the curse, was the problem.”

Sam groaned and thunked his head back against the wall, which was a bad idea because it made his head throb twice as hard.

“Well I’m all out of ideas,” he said. “How the Hell could we have a cursed object _and_ an enchanted time travel coin right next to each other in the same room--and neither of them were causing this problem!”

Einstein tilted his head and regarded Sam seriously. “Time is not absolute,” he said. “There is no audible _tick tock_ throughout the galaxy. No master clock keeping time for the universe. The distinction between the past, the present and the future is but a stubborn illusion.” 

Sam wasn’t impressed. “That’s all great in theory,” he said. “But right now, there’s a lot of _illusion_ running around this museum that’s capable of tearing us all apart.”

Einstein’s eyes sparkled. “I will put on my thinking cap,” he said and floated back to his blackboard.

Sam shifted slightly and winced when pain shot through his shoulder.

He glanced at the guy in all the bandages who was looking wide-eyed and generally freaked and then turned to Larry. “Have you heard from Dean?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Larry nodded. “He’s on his way. Said he got a little scratched up.”

Sam cursed and pushed himself to his feet.

“What are you doing?” Larry demanded.

“If Dean admitted to being ‘a little scratched up’, then he’s probably lost a leg or something. I’ve gotta get out there and find him.”

Sam tried to take a step forward but the wave of nausea and dizziness that hit knocked him back on his ass and he jarred his shoulder so badly in the process that for one brief, horrifying moment he thought he was going to pass out again.

When he opened his eyes again Larry’s face was way too close.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Larry said. “Dean said he’d come to us. We just got--”

“Dean!” said the guy with the bandages, his voice thick with relief.

Sam looked up as his brother staggered through the door.

“Hey Kyky,” his brother said.

Sam’s eyes shot down to his brother’s thigh, which had his hoodie wrapped around it and was still oozing blood.

“Dean,” he said. “What the Hell, man?”

Dean attempted a self-deprecating smile. “Cougar,” he made a clawing motion with his hands.

Sam’s eyes widened. “We need to get that cleaned up and bandaged.”

Dean nodded his agreement.

“But first,” he approached Sam. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “One, you douche.”

Dean grinned. And then placed his hands on either side of Sam’s shoulder. “On three. Ready? One,” Dean slammed his shoulder back into place and Sam swore and bent at the waist, breathing hard.

“Okay,” he said when he could speak again. “Your turn. We need something to clean the wound with.”

Larry pulled a silver flask out of his inside jacket pocket. “Jack Daniels. That do?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Sam took it. “And bandages. We need bandages.”

All three of them looked at…what did Dean call him? Kyky?”

Kyky looked kind of freaked and said something, which Sam figured was probably ancient Egyptian for ‘why are you all staring at me?’

“Kyky,” Dean said.

Kyky met his eyes. “Can we borrow some of your bandages?”

He pulled at them as he spoke and Kyky’s eyes widened in understanding.

They peeled off enough of the material to be able to bandage Dean’s thigh and calf and then Dean steeled himself and pulled his jeans down.

“Thank God we did laundry last week,” he said. “This would be so much more humiliating if I was going commando.”

Larry pulled a face. “Too much information, son,” he said.

Sam cleaned the wound left by the cougar’s claws while Dean stood with a death grip on the edge of Einstein’s desk, with his mouth clamped tightly shut and his eyes closed, as he worked hard at neither screaming or crying, because _fuck_ that hurt.

Eventually, Sam got it all cleaned and bandaged and Larry recommended that Dean go and get a dose of strong antibiotics when this was all over, because cat claws were nasty.

“Okay, okay,” Dean grumbled, doing up his jeans and refusing to make eye contact with anyone. “So where are we at getting this thing solved?”

Sam explained about the enchanted coin and the cursed medallion and how he’d salted and burned both of them, but it hadn’t stopped whatever was happening.

Dean listened and nodded in all the right places, but half of his mind was on Einstein, scribbling away at his blackboard.

“Gimme a minute, Sam,” he said.

“Herr Einstein,” he said. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”

Einstein beamed. “Why thank you…Dean, was it?”

“That’s right.”

Standing at Einstein’s elbow, Dean studied the blackboard.

“Huh,” he said. “You’re working on Unified Field Theory,” he frowned. “What’s this about Doppler shifts? That’s the equation for …blue shift, right?”

Einstein turned to look at him. “That’s right. If an object moves closer to us, the light moves to the blue end of the spectrum, as its wavelengths get shorter.”

Sam came up beside them. “You understand this?” he said to Dean.

Dean shrugged. “I was always good at math and physics. It made sense, you know?”

He turned back to Einstein. “You’re pretty famous, dude. You know that, right?”

“I suppose,” Einstein allowed.

“I learned about you in school. Did a whole project on you. I guess I saw something of myself in you. Not that I’m claiming to be as smart as you or anything. But…you were smarter than people realized, for a long time. And one of the things that separated you from all the other scientists was your imagination. A lot of people, they’re either good at math/science or they’re good at the arts. You…your imagination…that’s what let you take those intuitive leaps. You always explained things with real world examples. Like the twin paradox,” Dean stared at the blackboard for a moment and then turned to meet Einstein’s eyes. “You _know_ what’s going on here.”

Einstein raised an eyebrow. “What is going on here?”

Dean took a piece of chalk and circled an equation. “That’s new for a start,” he paused. “You’re not part of this, Herr Einstein. You’re a ghost. You haven’t been brought back to life like all the other stuff. You exist _outside_ of whatever’s happening, just like we do. My theory? Combine the God and Goddess of eternal time, the Goddess of Life and Magic and the ever-dreaming brain of Einstein and you get…something amazing. You’ve dreamed up a pocket universe, Herr Einstein, and you’ve brought every living thing here back to life. With daylight, it resets.”

“Why at daylight?” Sam asked.

Dean shrugged and nodded at Einstein. “It’s _his_ imagination. Who knows?”

There was an almighty bang and they all turned to see a polar bear throwing itself against the door.

“Shit,” Larry said, shoving Einstein’s desk up against the door. “You guys…whatever you’re gonna do… hurry!”

Dean took his cell phone out and went on line. “Look,” he said, showing Einstein the article he’d brought up. “Your general and special relativity theories have been _proved_. People have taken your work and built on it. It’s in good hands. The answers will come in their own time. You, though, need to rest now. Or this pocket universe is really gonna get out of control.”

Einstein sighed. “I know of Hunters. Know of the supernatural. There was a good reason I wanted my body cremated.”

Einstein glanced at his brain. “Its physicality isn’t unique, you know. You were right when you said that it was my imagination that made me,” he quirked a smile, “something special. As it says on the medallion, it is the combination of science _and_ the arts that betters humankind.”

Dean nodded. “Are you ready?”

Einstein nodded. “I suppose. I am already considered a mad scientist. I don’t want to make that any truer than it already is.”

“Will someone please explain what’s going on?” Larry said.

“Uh,” Sam put an arm around Larry’s shoulder. “Well, our buddy Albert is gonna go toward the light.”

Larry frowned. “What’s your brother doing? Dean…stop. You can’t…no! Leave that alone!”

Dean, having poured salt and lighter fluid on Einstein’s brain, set it alight.

Einstein smiled. “Fascinating,” he said and vanished in a flash of light.

A moment later there was a huge flash of red light and when Dean looked around, he and Larry were standing in front of the vaults.

Dean looked at his watch. “It’s still only 12.01 out here in the real world.”

Larry’s mouth fell open. “What the hell just happened?”

“I salted and burned Einstein’s brain, which caused the pocket universe his imagination had created to collapse.”

Larry gaped at him. And then he frowned. “Wait. You what? That brain was on loan! What are we gonna tell the Mutter Museum?”

Dean shrugged. “Just get another brain from somewhere, put it in the case. It’s not like anyone’ll be able to tell the difference.”

“But…it’s Einstein’s brain! It’s special.”

Dean shook his head. “Like he said, what he did with it was special. The meat? Not so much.”

“Dean’s right,” Sam said, bounding down the stairs and joining them in front of the vaults. “According to several neuroscientists, the studies that said his brain was physically different to everyone else’s were substantially flawed.”

“Besides,” Dean said, slapping Larry on the back, “that ain’t your biggest problem. You got a whole lotta exhibits to put back in place before the sun comes up. Me and Sam here, we’d love to help, but we’ve gotta go get medical attention.”

\--

Dean handed Sam the keys to the Dodge Challenger and slid into the passenger seat. “We got any anti-biotics in the medical kit?” he asked.

Sam frowned. “Uh, yeah. I think so.”

Dean nodded. “Good. Let’s hit the road, get outta the city.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, but didn’t start the car, just sat for a moment looking at his brother.

“I forgot, you know,” Sam said.

“About what?”

“That I wasn’t the only one who won a Science Fair trophy.”

Dean bit at his bottom lip. “Why you bringin’ up ancient history, Sammy?”

“Because you figured this one out. You went off to be the brawn and then you limped into the room, took one look at that blackboard and figured it out.”

Dean shook his head. “It wouldn’t’ve made sense if you hadn’t figured out about the enchanted coin and the cursed medallion. This one was weird, even for us.” 

Sam sighed. “I guess what I’m saying is…you gotta stop selling yourself short, man. You are more than just the muscle. You’re good for a lot more than shooting things. And if I ever make you feel like you’re not, just because you didn’t go to college, then feel free to remind me that you wrote an award-winning paper on Albert Einstein and General Relativity _and_ built a space/time simulator in middle school.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah. Well. You’re the only one of us who actually _got_ a Science Fair trophy. I may have won one, but we had to skip town before the actual presentation,” Dean stretched out his leg and winced slightly. “And for the record, I’m well aware that you and I are both bad-ass geniuses. I know I call you _college boy_ , but you gotta know that ain’t a bad thing. And it doesn’t mean you can’t kick monster ass when you need to.”

Sam started up the engine and pulled out of the parking garage.

“You know what I like most about Einstein,” Dean said as he punched in his Led Zeppelin 2 tape and pressed play, conveniently forgetting his own rule about driver picking the music.

“What?”

“He was a physicist, but he explained everything with stories. I mean, sure, he called them thought experiments, but they always started with something like: ‘Imagine you’re on a train and there are two lightning strikes.’ He used to say that imagination was more important than knowledge and that the purpose of life was to think _beyond_ the imagination. And you know, the way we grew up, books, movies, TV shows. They were our constants,” Dean winced again and rubbed at his leg. “I dunno what I’m trying to say, man. I’m tired and my leg hurts. I guess…Einstein was like this world-renowned genius, but he was also kind of ordinary. And he made me feel like I could be smart too.” 

Sam’s lips twitched. “A bad-ass genius, even?”

Dean grinned. “Damn straight,” he pushed his seat back and lay down. “What do you say we risk a Motel 6 tonight? Wake me up when we get there.”

Sam agreed that he would and together, they drove off into the night.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to my beta reader E, to Amberdreams for the great prompt, and to the challenge mods for once again running this fun challenge. If you enjoy the story, I'd love to hear from you! <3


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